SCARCELY had the echoes of the explosion in Tom Swift’s laboratory died away, being swallowed up in the blackness and silence of the night, than members of the Swift household began stirring. Mr. Swift, Tom’s aged and rather infirm father, sat up in bed and called: “What was that? Thunder?” “No, Massa Swift,” answered Eradicate, the faithful colored servant, who, now that Mr. Swift had declined so, was his personal attendant, sleeping in the next room. “No, Massa Swift,” he repeated. “Dat wa’n’t no thunder.” By this time Eradicate was moving about and fumbling for a light. Mr. Swift, however, had reached up and switched on the reading lamp attached to the head of his bed. “What was it then?” asked the aged inventor, for Mr. Swift had begun invention work when Tom was a mere baby. “I spects, Massa, dat it was somethin’ Tom been doin’ out in his lab’tory,” the colored man answered. He had his own light on now and was beginning to dress, preparatory to making an investigation. “If Tom was in the midst of anything that made a noise like that he must be hurt!” declared Mr. Swift. “That was a sharp explosion. Hurry, Rad, and see what it was.” “Yes, sah, Massa Swift, I’s a-hurryin’!” answered Eradicate. From a room farther down the hall in the Swift home came a deep, heavy voice exclaiming: “Fire! Fire! Koku see much blaze!” Koku was a gigantic specimen of a man whom Tom had brought back with him from an airship trip to a distant, mysterious land. The giant was rather simple, and never seemed to be able to master the English language. But he was a faithful servant and, because of his enormous strength, Tom frequently used Koku as a guard about the plant. “Fire?” cried Mr. Swift, fumbling for his clothes. “Is there a fire, Koku?” “Much blaze in Master Tom’s workshop,” the giant replied. He could not twist his tongue around “laboratory.” “Dey suah is a fire!” cried Eradicate, running to his window. “By golly, whole place looks like it was burnin’!” By this time Mrs. Baggert, the housekeeper, several other servants, and Garret Jackson, the shop manager and superintendent, who was spending the night at the Swift home, had been aroused. Several workmen in the Swift plant, who lived not far from the experimental laboratory, had also been aroused by the explosion and the glare of flames and were now running to help, adding their voices to the others giving the alarm. By this time Mr. Swift, with Eradicate and Koku, had descended to the yard that was between the laboratory and the house, and by the glare of the flames Tom’s inert body was seen stretched out on the grass. Eradicate and Koku bent over the body of the young inventor. Koku felt for the heart and found it beating. “Master Tom no dead,” said the giant simply. “Then carry him into the house, and send for a doctor at once,” directed Mr. Swift. “Oh, what could have happened? The whole place will go up in flames and Tom’s valuable new invention will be destroyed!”